The Dragon Quest name may be recognized around the world, but it’s Japan where the series both originates from and counts most of its fans. So it wasn’t that surprising to discover the first eight Dragon Quest games are being ported to mobile platforms. Specifically, Android and iOS devices will be able to play them all, at least in Japan.

What is surprising, and confirms just how popular Dragon Quest is in Japan, is the fact the series is set to get its very own branded smartphone.

The SH-01F smartphone is being manufactured by Sharp and is a variant of the Aquos Phone Zeta. It will include a 5-inch 1080 x 1920 resolution touchscreen display, a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon processors, 3,000mAh battery, and a 15.9 megapixel camera on the back (2.1 megapixel camera on the front). It will run Android 4.2 and is apparently waterproof, meeting the IPX5 standard.

The Dragon Quest branding can be seen on the back of the device, with the silver color called Metal Slime and several characters being printed across it alongside the Square Enix logo. A free copy of Dragon Quest VIII will come preinstalled on the device, and I’m sure there’s going to be some graphical modifications on the phone to enhance the branding further.

There’s no details on price or availability beyond a December launch, but this is definitely going to be an expensive phone to get your hands on. NTT DoCoMo is only going to offer 30,000 of them, so you can imagine a few auctions occurring soon after launch.

As for Dragon Quest VIII, you may be surprised to find Square Enix has decided the mobile version will be played in portrait mode on devices. You can see it in action in the video below:

This actually makes sense on a phone because a lot of time is spent in combat in the game, which therefore requires regular screen tapping. By making it a portrait game, it’s going to be much easier to do that holding the phone in one hand, say, when you’re commuting to work.